The last leg of the Amgen Tour of California will send cyclists racing down Sunset Boulevard through Echo Park and Silver Lake on Sunday morning. The event may also see some car and truck owners racing to move their vehicles before Sunset Boulevard is closed to traffic and parking is banned from 6 a.m. to 1 p.m. Metro and Dash bus riders should also prepare for delays and disruption as the race makes it way from Beverly Hills to Downtown Los Angeles. Spectators planning to watch the event from the sidewalk will be treated to a relatively brief but impressive show. The competing teams of cyclists – traveling at 25 mph to 35 mph – are expected take only five minutes to pass any given point on the route.

That’s true. You won’t even be able to take the Sunset Blvd. bus anywhere!

But this report might make it sound like more than it is. Am I to presume that the street will be closed the entire time between those hours, even though all the cyclists are expected to pass by any spot in only about five minutes time? That would have them through Echo Park-Silver Lake by, gee, about a half hour after the race started! (When does the race start? This story doesn’t tell us!) Surely they aren’t going to keep the road closed for several more hours after they are completely done with it!

Can’t we put these cyclists on a “road diet,” relegating them to just one lane and leaving the rest of the street open? Don’t road diets apply to cyclists? Surely putting them on a road diet will only serve to make their race flow so much more smoothly, so much better for them, since that is what they say a road diet will do for cars.

meh. don’t bother me. anyone who wakes up at 6am on a sunday and has issue with the road being closed off needs to CHILLLLLL…but i will say i feel bad for those folks who need to get to work on the bus. no bueno.

I’ll be be out there cheering them on, but just to be clear: this is a major professional sporting event sponsored by large corporations and has about as much to do with the average bike commuter, recreational cyclist or even “TheEastside bicycle industrial complex” as the Indianapolis 500 does with your drive to work or the grocery store.

I imagine there are a few folks in Paris get upset when the Tour de France rolls through.

So these riders will not be illegally using cellphones whist cursing neighborhood auto drivers. And I assume that the will not be bike bar hopping, assuming, as they must, that drunk bike riding is legal. I welcome professionals who don’t drink and ride, putting everyone at risk, then dump on car owners. The local hypocrisy is nauseating!

I apologize for allowing my antipathy towards the “road diet” idiocy to imply that the participants in the Amgen Tour of California, which is a legitimate competition, have any connection to the obnoxious behavior of certain local cyclists and their supporters. I have great respect for the athletes, have been following the tour and look forward to seeing them on Sunset Bl.

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